Last Train Home – Legion Tales DLC Review (PC) – Tall Tales
We all have those awkward family gatherings with the eccentric uncle, who has more wildly non-sensical tales than you’ve had hot dinners. Well, I assume we all do, right? The Last Train Home – Legion Tales DLC is the quintessential video game version of said uncle. As the main game is the rest of your family shaking their heads in serious earnest, Legion Tales is the charismatic, over-exaggerated bombast of a churlish yet endearing family member.
As we already know, the base game of Last Train Home was fantastic. A serious, no-nonsense blast of tactical action, resource management and tense decision-making. Legion Tales, however, is a welcome respite filled with the humour expected of those recounting their heroic moments in fond nostalgia. A set of 10 standalone missions, we follow the stories of seasoned soldier and storyteller Zoltan.
Are the missions worth returning to Last Train Home for? Can they hold their own without the superb management mechanics and nerve-shredding decisions to labour over? Grab a beer and pull up a stool, the Legion Tales need a tellin’.
Take It With A Pinch Of Zoltan Pepper
Legion Tales’ missions are based on the stories told by Zoltan, providing Ashborne Games the opportunity to get more creative and light-hearted than the base game would allow. It means that details can be exaggerated for fun gameplay, and more elaborate set-pieces can be justified with ease. It’s a very effective means of doing away with the resource management systems without losing immersion.
Which means the emphasis falls upon the squad command and RTS gameplay to come to the fore of the battle. Now, in the vanilla version, Last Train Home has pretty excellent strategy mechanics, albeit largely dependent on how well you were managing your squad outside of the levels themselves. Here, you’re given a designated squad, with ammo and skills already assigned.
I found this presented a new challenge – how best to utilise my team I haven’t customised to my liking. You still have limited ammo and despite Zoltan’s boasts, your units are still very fragile. Consequently, each mission becomes a tactical Rubix cube to wrap your noggin around. It works well, encouraging aggressive and more stealthy play in different scenarios. Plus, the freedom to go all guns blazing versus tip-toe slow is still available, which is great.
Unfortunately, the rougher edges of the game are laid bare more frequently without the other systems to cover for them. Pathfinding can still go very awry in the most inopportune moments. Some objectives can be a pain to try and complete in stealth fashion without being tedious. Oh, and don’t get me started on the tank mission, with some of the worst hit detection which caused me to fail far too many times. Call of Duty’s servers would blush at how good it makes their hit detection seem.
Tales of Foe
If I’m being transparent, this tank mission was the most egregious. Particularly as it involved a time limit, crowds of enemies and a reliance on tight mechanics that sadly weren’t present, aside from this one frustrating mission, the rest are superb. There’s a diversity in objectives that keep things fresh and the means through which the developers challenge your understanding of the game is expertly achieved.
This is what all good DLCs should do – present an extension of the core gameplay that can keep veterans of the original game interested. Legion Tales achieves that, thanks to the overwhelming odds you face and the diversity of the levels. Indeed, you’ll go from rescuing a cat from the collapsing shafts of an exploding mine, to commandeering a squad of tanks and pulverising an advancing army.
There’s a bombastic and eccentric feel to the objectives, which plays into the lighter-hearted tone so well. More importantly, the missions are just fun to run through. From holding my ground for two desperate minutes with a machine gunner tearing through an advancing horde, to having to reload after my squad got wiped by a precarious gun emplacement, Legion Tales is exciting.
Some definitely work better than others, and the addition of side objectives means you can strive for perfection if you wish. I found it a nice touch that while you’re told what the side objectives are, many of them require you to explore and discover them independently. Instead of just marking them on your map from the off, you need to venture out and find them, encouraging replayability for what you missed.
Tale The Story Your Way
Speaking of replayability, Legion Tales is chock-full of it. While your first attempt at any mission is with a narrative squad, once you’ve completed it, you can retry with other variations of unit composition. Finishing side objectives and the levels themselves rewards points, which are then spent unlocking new squads to master.
Additionally, you can then slap on various modifiers to make your life that much harder. Who doesn’t want to make the battlefield that much more lethal for themselves? It’s a solid means of encouraging repeated playthroughs and extending the life of these already enticing missions. Again, it’s a system that wouldn’t have flown well in the base game, but works perfectly for the DLC setup.
At £11.99 you’re getting a strong set of 10 missions that hold a great amount of replayability. There are the occasional lulls and frustrations, but this DLC serves to emphasise just how adept Last Train Home’s core gameplay truly is. I had a blast returning to the game and hearing Zoltan’s exaggerated anecdotes. Is it worth returning to the Last Train Home for? Absolutely.
Legion Tales expands the Last Train Home experience superbly with a set of light-hearted, blustering and challenging missions. With plenty of replayability value thanks to modifiers and unlockable squads, Legion Tales adds a good dozen or so hours to the already value-for-money base game. Be warned of the tank mission and the odd frustration, however, which turn more into nightmares than legends.
Last Train Home – Legion Tales is available now on PC (review platform).
Developer: Ashborn Games
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the DLC. For our full review policy, please go here.
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